


the whole is so much greater (than the sum of these parts)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [265]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Celegorm is Trying, Disfigurement, Disordered Eating, Fingon is also Trying, Gen, Maedhros would like to stop Trying, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Title from a Sleeping At Last Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25214338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "In beauty there echoes a speck of our souls."- Sleeping at Last[Estrela relearns Russandol.]
Relationships: Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Original Character(s), Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [265]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	the whole is so much greater (than the sum of these parts)

“I know it is a great deal to ask.”

Fingolfin wears apology as some men wear the threat of their anger; heavy on the shoulders, deep in the throat. If Estrela was permitted to be useless, she could spend many hours pondering what it is that makes Fingolfin so very different from other men. What has rendered him kind, despite his profound sorrow?

Gwindor is a relentless stream of information: he heard, and so Estrela heard, that Fingolfin’s wife and youngest son died on the long road west. In some dark dimension, it seems, the fault of this lies at Russandol’s feet.

Gwindor could not even bring himself to finish _that_ thought, but Estrela swallowed it whole, felt the pain of it like poison in her belly, then forged on.

Fingolfin does not blame Russandol. This much, she knows.

_And I…_

“It is nothing,” she says. “I am as glad to help now as I was when—when he was still sleeping. But I…you are his uncle. Fingon is his cousin. I am nothing to Maedhros, except that I am in his debt.”

Fingolfin does not answer this, at first, and she is left in blushing confusion as he considers her closely. No, perhaps not _her_. He is not looking at her, closely; he is choosing his words carefully. This is also unlike other men.

“May I be candid with you, Estrela?”

“Yes.” She mutters that; she mutters everything.

Once again, he has found her in the main hall, this time consumed by a task for which she volunteered: peeling potatoes. She did not want to appear incapable as well as hideous to the other women. Sandy-haired Nora still looks at her strangely, if at all, but the one who handed her a knife did so with a smile.

She took it, the knife, in her right hand. The shudder rolled over her instantly. She had almost forgotten what it was like to hold violence, plainly, in one’s palm.

“I fear my nephew is quite close to madness,” Fingolfin says quietly, watching russet flake away from white. No one is close enough to hear. “He has told me so little of what you know, and what I can guess, to have been hell.”

“He is very strong,” Estrela murmurs. _Stronger than anyone._

_…justice, it’s all justice._

Fingolfin says. “I think you do him good.”

The knife nearly slips, nearly nicks her fingertip. “Me?”

“You and Gwindor. Friends who saw hell with him.” Fingolfin lifts his chin, looks about them as if to make doubly certain that no one else is privy to their exchange, then says, “Indeed, the faintest understanding of the past wrongs done you lends only to my guilt. Both you and Gwindor ought to rest, as much as you should, and be spared the cares of our family troubles, as much as you can be, in this place. Believe me, I am humbled by your choice to stay by Maedhros’ side. But at any time—if it is in my power to assist you in _leaving_ , if that is what you truly wish—” He stops, abruptly. “Forgive me. I ramble. I forget myself.”

Somehow, she is certain that Fingolfin has never forgotten himself.

“You are asking,” Estrela says, trying to help him, trying to help this good man, “If I want to be here. I do.”

“Yes.”

“And you are asking,” she adds, only dimly aware that _he_ cannot feel the fire surging in her veins, “If I want to give him aid. I do. I only doubt the method. _I_ do not believe it will offer comfort, if he wakes in the night to my scarred face. I am mutilated, sir. I have had years to become accustomed to it. Do not trouble yourself or your nephew, with concerns for my feelings.” She shakes her head. “Not now.”

“It is not so,” Fingolfin says, neither hesitant nor rambling all of a moment, but quite firm. “No, Estrela. I already know that it is not so.”

Seated in Fingolfin’s old chair at Russandol’s bedside, she still is not certain whether she believed him. It does not matter if she did or not, however; she surrendered. She is here, preparing to spend a night by the bedside because Fingolfin believes varied company, _trusted_ company, will be of use.

Fingon must agree, too. He is the one who informed Russandol that Estrela would stay with him, and then he excused himself from the room.

Russandol’s chin dips low; his gaze slants sideways. It is past the late sentries’ supper, and perhaps he is tired, but Estrela knows from her own visits and from Gwindor that Russandol does not often sleep.

She wants, badly, to ask him if he wants her here. The question is a cliff; speaking it is suicide. Estrela keeps her crooked mouth shut.

An uneven sigh creaks in Russandol’s chest. This is another sign that something more than weariness is gnawing at him. Estrela, for her part, longs for occupation. Her hands are still a little stiff for mending, but she will attempt it soon. A joy, it will be, to mend with a sharp needle and serviceable thread. _This_ is a world where work is done for the good: a blouse, cut down to Sticks’ size. A garden planted. A map, sketched—but that only someday. At present, she fears that that would remind her of too much.

“You are still here,” Russandol says, “In Mithrim.”

She startles. Flushes darker under his gaze than Fingolfin’s, but thankfully, by less light. “Of course,” she says.

“Of course?” He has the fingers of his left hand folded up at the first knuckle; clawed. He is hurting, hurting terribly, but there is nothing she can do for him without touching him. Without leaping over other cliffs.

(She sailed with her father, and saw chalk-white Dover. It was like this. The idea of it is beauty, but you can only see it as such from a great distance. You only love what does not belong to you.)

 _I have nowhere else to go._ But that is a complaint; she will not complain to Russandol. And there are other truths. “The children are safe, here. I think they can be happy.”

“And you stay for them?”

Will he make her say it? They are alone, for a precious moment.

“I have nowhere I would rather be,” she says. “Gwindor and the children and…and you.”

His eyes move, the lids and lashes shifting the shadows on his face. “Do I hold you here?”

She must remember that this is Russandol, who only thinks of himself before others as his torturers did. As something to loathe and deride. “You are not holding me here by any force or bond,” she says. “I want to stay. I want…I want to see you well again.”

“Estrela,” he says. “Don’t be like Fingon, forcing syruped cornmeal down my throat.” His voice turns caustic, but she does not heed that because his words surprise her so.

“Do you mean it—you ate something? That is—”

“It didn’t.” His nose twitches: embarrassment. She recognizes that. Almost the first expression she _has_ recognized, from the time when she used to threaten him with her bread and dried meat. Her potatoes, of all things. “It didn’t stay.”

“Still.” She has forgotten to hide her hands again; they are clasped around her knees as she leans forward, having also forgotten that she should not appear eager. “Still, that is a beginning. A good beginning, that Fingon thinks you ready. I—when I woke, I was miserable with broth for a few days. It felt so insubstantial. Food was…strange. And I had little reason to be so weak, I—I had only—”

He is looking at her strangely. Then he says, tautly, “After. After he starved you.”

_Not to death, because you worked quickly, Russandol._

She keeps those words inside, fearful of what they might call to his mind. Her mouth stumbles anyway.

“I should have been more careful with the comb. It was too obvious…a gift.”

He—laughs. Not a real laugh, but a swift expulsion of breath, his brows arching. “ _You_ were not careful? I made it a weapon. Twice, in fact. It wasn’t because of you that—he knew. I had played it as a card, you see. Unfortunately he was present, at the time.”

She feels hot and cold at once. Her hands, at least, are cold. She doesn’t understand, beyond the pain. “I’m not here to trouble you,” she says. “That would be a discredit to everything that Fingon is trying—”

“Fingon is _trying_ a great deal,” Russandol interrupts, graver than ever. “He’s less hasty than his pudding, I promise you that. He’ll keep on forever. Your memories…they’re not going to turn me into a raving lunatic. And even if they did, Lord knows it might be an improvement.”

Sorrow crashes against her. That is why Fingon left so suddenly; a quarrel, over hope. “You’re so vicious. But only to yourself.”

“You know why,” he says, almost intimately. Almost enough to make her wish that she did.

“I know very little,” Estrela murmurs. _And what I know, I dare not say. What I can guess of Bauglir’s choice of you, of Mairon’s vengeance—_ “I am the strangest stranger in this fort.”

“Have they been kind to you?” he asks, his head turned by a new subject. “Here?”

“Yes.” She need not tell him of her slight unease, the burning sensation in her eyeless face when stares linger. “Especially your family. Your uncle and cousins…”

“And what about my brothers?”

“Amras begins to like the children, as you know.” She smiles. She endeavors to hide her smile from those who are not inured to it, but Russandol does not flinch. “Sticks is suspicious of his motives, yet.”

“Amras is good-hearted,” Russandol says. “But more easily offended than—” He pauses, the gap in his words a well of silent grief, and then, “And Maglor? Have you seen much of Maglor? I know when we…we last spoke, of them, you had not met them all.”

That was only a few days ago, all told. But Estrela has been confined to dire bedrest before. She knows how time slips, striated with pain.

Russandol must be very lost, in time.

She does not know much of Maglor yet, though, save what he looked like at Russandol's unconscious side, so she shakes her head. Grasps at immaterial straws. “But he is…he is the next after you, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” He blinks rapidly. Thinking. “He would be—he would be just twenty-two. Quite recently.”

“I don’t know how old I am any longer,” Estrela says, because the subject of Maglor seems to pain him as much as that strange gap between Amras and his next thought did. “I was eighteen. But that was before Frog was born. I knew—I knew his mother. So I count my years by him.”

“His mother,” Russandol murmurs. “And his father?”

Estrela nods. But she doesn’t want to speak of that, of _him_ , and Russandol can doubtless tell as much from her face, because he says,

“Alas, I cannot forget my age.” He doesn’t tell her what it is. “And at eighteen, I was remarkably stupid, so you see that little has changed on that count, at the very least.”

Estrela imagines him innocent, dreams of him happy, and finds that looking at him now, she has no ground on which such dreams can stand.

“You make me want to argue with you,” she says. “And how is that fair? If I argue with you, your cousin shall come back and scold me for mistreating an invalid.”

A smile limps across his features, and is then stayed by the crash of the door being battered open.

“Holy Jesus,” says Celegorm, maneuvering a long wooden bench through the gap. “Ah, here we are.” He settles his burden against one wall, throws down a woolen blanket over it, and clicks his tongue. “All right then, rascal. In you come.”

His wolfhound pads in behind him, looking more sheepish than his master—in Estrela’s view—ever has.

“Saw Fingon dragging himself to the mess hall like he’d just been thrashed.” Celegorm fixes his brother a sparkling glare of approval. “Can only hope you gave him said thrashing. Overdue.”

“He’s tired, is all,” Russandol answers, saying nothing, Estrela notes, of the failed supper. “I’m a good deal of trouble.”

“I’d hope for that, too. Anyhow, I knew he’d give me no end of hell for cluttering up his so-called infirmary. So I waited for the prime moment. Been eyeing this one for weeks. In the courtyard, it was. No one needed it.” He sits down, heavy with satisfaction, and lifts one boot up so that he can rest his elbow on it. Then his gaze falls on Estrela. She feels small under it. A different kind of small than she does beside Russandol. “Hullo,” he says. Then he twists down to look at Huan, who has crawled beneath the bench. “Well? Are you happier with a hidey-hole?”

Estrela turns her eye to Russandol, wondering. He seems uncertain too, communicating as much by a furrow in his brow, but he appears no unhappier than he was moments ago.

Celegorm never noticed her, before, save to coldly observe, or to angrily chide her for her suggestion that Russandol’s hair be cut.

(In the end, they washed the filth and tangles out of it, and left it long. It is in a sorry state, thin and ragged to his chin, but the color is brighter than it was.)

The question now is: how has she obtained Celegorm’s forgiveness?

“You stole a bench from your own courtyard,” Russandol is saying. “I’m honored.”

“Floor’s too hard for enduring hours of Fingon’s prattling,” Celegorm says. He is well-pleased with himself; he is almost smiling, and his dog licks at his heel. “Speaking of mess, though. I brought back a brace of jackrabbits today. Could fricassee ‘em. You used to like rabbit.”

Russandol’s shoulders shift against his pillow. “Thank you. I’m afraid—can’t stomach much yet.”

“Ah. Into the general pot it goes, then.”

“You still use your bow?” A question, barely hesitant.

Celegorm nods. “It’s quiet. Good for winter kills.” He scoffs. “Not that this is much of a winter.” And without warning, his next words are directed at Estrela. “You hale from around here? You call this winter?”

Russandol attempts to sit up, no doubt spurred by an old habit of interjecting himself physically into rising conflicts. She saw him do it at the mountain, and saw him punished for it. Here, he is punished again, by his fractured ribs. He eases himself back down with a breath close to a whine. 

Estrela is sorry for his trouble, and made even sorrier by the fact that there was no need for it. Celegorm is not challenging her. He is, she thinks, drawing her into conversation without knowing how to really do so.

Again, an unexpected show of trust. But of course, she does not know him as well as Russandol does. She must not make too many guesses as to what his manners mean.

“I am from a good many places,” she says, in reply to the question. “My father was Portuguese. A mapmaker, and a navigator. We lived some years in Baton Rouge, some years in Missouri. When he could not be near the sea, he sought out rivers.”

Her own words shock her. She has not spoken with such honesty since darkness closed over her eyes and mouth, her life. Now she gives away her past to a stranger, easy as—

 _As a knife._ Well-sharpened, familiar, held in the hand. When you are the one with the weapon—when you are freed—your next incisions surprise you.

(She is surprised, too, that she does not exactly feel pain.)

“There’s loads of maps here,” Celegorm says, which, if true, could hold her interest for hours—but Celegorm makes no further explanation. “Hey, Maitimo, speaking of foreign parts, you recall the name of Doriath?”

“Yes.”

Estrela is lost to them, to Doriath, where Haleth brings Maria and the rest. She does not know whether Russandol knows it, because she is (in her mind) no longer seeing Russandol as he is here, lacerated top to toe by the fury of so many. She is instead transported to the past, to the cramped quarters where Bauglir had secretly ordered the new slave watched and guarded. Estrela secretly obeyed that order, without her devil ever knowing she was there.

In those quarters—

_Bom dia. Good morning. Boa tarde. Good afternoon. Adeus. Goodbye. No, I shan’t teach you how to be sorry._

All this, while dust filtered down from the new-thatched roof, and blood seeped like rust through Russandol’s bandages. Between the still-weeping welts and gouges, the sunburnt skin was peeling in webbed sheets. Itching, too.

She could see how near to panic he was. His eyes were always too wide, like a frightened horse’s.

 _Boa tarde_ , he repeated, his teeth clenched together. _How polite we are._

He had, that day, asked her for a few words from her language—coaxed her, really, saying Sticks teased him mercilessly for not knowing what she meant when she muttered, _puta merda_ , and would not tell him herself.

 _Oh,_ Estrela said, mortified. _That was—that was a mistake. I oughtn’t to have spoken so._

Russandol was too tired to coax much further. Which was for the best, because he cursed very prettily already, and Estrela did not need to hear his skillfulness with her own tongue. She bored him with greetings, and then relented and recited a snatch of Almeida Garrett.

_Saudade! Gosto amargo de infelizes._

_Delicioso pungir de acerbo espinho,_

_Que me estás repassando o íntimo peito_

_Com dor que os seios d’alma dilacera—_

( _Oh tender yearning! bitterness of joy_

_For the unhappy, thorn of absence with_

_Delicious puncture piercing through the heart,_

_Awakening pain that tears the soul—_ )

She had translated it badly, conscious of his attention devoted to her. Thinking too much of a proud and beautiful girl who recited before appreciative guests, smiling with well-shaped lips at their compliments.

Now she is flung back, to Russandol thrice-beaten and thrice-burned, telling his brother that he knows very little of Doriath, but Estrela, don’t you know that—

“Haleth led everyone else there?”

“Yes.” She swallows hard, swallows not only her own past, but the first memories of Russandol. Sometimes she is so preoccupied with their fraught present that she forgets that he is the same—the same who was muzzled more cruelly than a dog, the same whom she thanked for his kindness.

His eyes…his eyes are the same.

He is waiting for more.

“Gwindor would know better than I,” she says. “The plan was never mine, and I—” At first, of course, she was herself in need of rest and healing. After, she was helping Fingon whenever she could. “I understand from Wachiwi that Doriath shelters friends.”

“I turned away a spy of theirs,” Celegorm says to his brother. “Perhaps he meant no harm, but we took no chances.” He clears his throat. “What was Haleth’s quarrel on the mountain, anyway? One hears snatches.”

It is Estrela’s turn to wish that she could place herself between that question and Russandol. And what does that say, for her own affection? Her own memories of Haldar?

“I…”

“She had a brother there,” Russandol says, low, before Estrela can manage a defense.

Celegorm asks no more questions on that score. The door opens and admits Fingon. In the time that Estrela has come to known him, Fingon is serious, warm, wise, deliberate—

Except when it comes to Russandol. Then he is nervous, too quick to smile and too quick to flinch. His warmth whitens, becoming flame.

This is what she observed thus far, at least. Fingon seems rather subdued as he enters. His lips thin at the sight of Celegorm, or the bench, or both, but he makes no comment. He has a teapot in one hand.

“Peppermint,” he says. “To settle your stomach.”

“Much obliged,” says Russandol, looking ashamed again.

Fingon’s return has worked a change over Celegorm, too. His frank half-smile fades to a sullen glower, and he shrinks into himself, even as he splays his legs wider on the bench.

Fingon avoids their eyes; indeed, he avoids settling himself in his usual position on Russandol’s left, instead busying himself with tidying his collection of bowls, bottles, sachets, and carefully ordered instruments. Estrela is amazed by how quickly Fingon has amassed a collection of aids to rival an Eastern apothecary.

When Fingon sits down, he tests Russandol’s pulse. Celegorm has stretched out on his bench, the blanket thrown over his knees, but Estrela watches Fingon, studying with him the pale underside of Russandol’s thin wrist.

So thin. When she was his helper, in the camp, she had thought him as hungry as the next slave. A little hungrier, perhaps. But there is hardly any flesh on his bones, now.

“Maitimo,” Fingon says, in a voice not much above a whisper. “You must eat.”

“Mm.”

“Not tonight—we won’t try again tonight, but we _must_ tomorrow.”

Estrela stares at her lap.

“If you would…” Fingon musters himself. Rallies. “If you would tell me what you think may be palatable—bread, potatoes, oat porridge—”

“My tongue will give you whatever answer you like,” Russandol tells him, too smoothly for comfort. Estrela raises her eye to see. Is he—angry? Or is this just another way of hiding fear? “It’s my throat that will protest.”

“But how—”

Russandol says, “It _can_ be forced.”

Estrela holds her breath. In the corner of her already cornered vision, Celegorm sits up. Silent.

Fingon frowns. “Forced? I don’t want—”

“But you want me to eat,” Russandol murmurs. “I am instructing you, doctor, on how to succeed at your task. Open my mouth—I’ve been trained not to bite—and spoon a little in. Smother me until I swallow. If I choke it up, smother me again.”

Fingon is speechless. At least, Estrela assumes so, for no word breaks through the roar in her ears. She shuts her eye, too. The ocean breaks against the cliffs, and breaks her with it.

She stays like that for a long time.

After a while, the waves recede. She opens her eye, horribly afraid that one of the three of them will be looking at her, will see that she has shed tears. But nothing has changed. Fingon sits in his chair, his hands on his knees. Russandol’s face is turned towards him, but his eyes are shut, his mouth a hard line.

“Tomorrow,” Fingon says, breaking the silence. His voice is like his father’s, except that Estrela hears no apology, even in his next words. “I am sorry for it. I will be as gentle as I can.”

Sometime after midnight, Gwindor comes to relieve her of her post. Estrela picks her way blearily down the hall—he had woken her from a doze—and finds that the children are cuddled close to each other, at the fireside. The stable could not last forever, of course. This is a proper development.

She wraps herself in an extra blanket, shivering even though any stony chill has been chased away by the glowing embers. The ache, then, is not her bones, but in her heart.

How many Russandols can there be? How many brothers and cousins, and double shades of each of those?

How is she to understand them?

 _These are not my people_ , she reminds herself. _Not mine_. She can thrill under his notice, permit herself a few unspoilt dreams. But they will never be more than dreams, and more than that, her past and her dreams cannot help him.

Whatever was done to him in the mountain, before and after she knew him first, is not a scar cut into his body.

Whatever was done to him lives inside him still. 


End file.
